February 24, 2015

On Thursday 26th February I will be speaking about the relationship between trans identity/experience and sexual orientation at UCL.

"When LGBQ trans people can be excluded and marginalised by both transphobia in LGBQ spaces and homo-, bi- and lesbophobia in trans spaces, how do we live all these aspects of our identities? How do our communities manage or fail to meet our needs, and how can we and they change this? There will be an opportunity for questions and contributions from the floor.

January 25, 2015

This was huge amounts of fun! Wharf Chambers is such a wonderfully friendly and welcoming space, and I always have a great time when I'm there. I was booked to play a Killer Queen - style queer alt/rock set with an hour themed around "Buffy The Vampire Slayer".

November 23, 2014

I will be a keynote panelist at next year's Onscenity Sexual Cultures Conference, speaking about the intersection of trans academia and activism.

The conference, co-hosted by the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies, University of Sunderland, and the Onscenity Research Network will take place on April 8-10 2015 at the University of Sunderland London Campus, London, UK.

November 15, 2014

Recently I received an unsolicited email in my work account from an employee of Sundog Pictures. An excerpt follows:

I’m currently working on an idea alongside Channel 4 following transgender individuals who have come to regret their sex changes and are keen to undergo further treatment / operations to reverse the change. The doc will be insightful and sensitive and will look at the way in which transgender individuals are treated in society and whether the process before someone is permitted an operation is robust enough.

I’m currently looking for real life cases to include in my pitch document and was wondering whether you might be able to recommend people I could speak to, or places I could contact to find individuals who are currently thinking about a reverse sex change. Any help would be really appreciated.

Given the email account used, I feel that I can safely assume that I was contacted because of my academic work, which looks at discourses of trans healthcare provision. Sundog seem to hope that I will (without compensation) draw upon my community contacts and research findings to recommend participants for their television programme.

I couldn’t think of anything more inappropriate.

There’s a lot to be said about research ethics and a duty of care towards participants, but plenty has been written about that elsewhere (the BSA Statement of Ethical Practice offers a decent broad overview). So in this post I focus on the huge problems that come with the proposed topic of the documentary: that of trans “regret”.